inspired by the 1932 OIympics, and to emulate the Alps experience in the USA, Union Pacific Railroad began construction of both a connecting railroad line and the buildings that would become America’s first ski resort.

The 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, turned the nation onto the idea of skiing.

Following the games, Averell Harriman, chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, wanted to find a way to give Americans a new place to ski. To search for a destination that would rival Europe’s Alps, the perfect place for the development of resorts and ski slopes, he hired an Austrian skier to travel across the U.S.,

Traveling on the railroad through the Western U.S., the now-popular ski sites such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Salt Lake City, Utah, were inspected but passed on, and instead Sun Valley, Idaho was decided on in January 1936.

Immediately, Union Pacific Railroad began construction of both a connecting railroad line and the buildings for a safer, faster way to get skiers to the top of the mountain. Within a few months, a completely new kind of lift, similar to the chairs we know today, had been installed on the mountain. By Christmas of that year, the resort held its grand opening, bringing in movie stars by train from Los Angeles.

Sun Valley, which today proclaims itself as, “America’s first destination resort,” emerged as one of the country’s most famous ski resorts and contributed to the development of the ski industry.

The Sun Valley Lodge hasn’t changed much since Ernest Hemingway first started hanging out there in the 1930s.

Up until the opening of the Sun Valley Resort in 1936 by Averell Harriman as America's first destination ski resort, the history of backcountry skiing had been synonymous with the history of U.S. skiing as a whole. Sun Valley was the fork in the road where skiing diverged into the modern concepts of resort skiing and backcountry skiing.

While that perspective is apparent today, at the time it was more likely a distinction been between wealthy individuals and "normal" people skiing. For ordinary ski enthusiasts at the end of the 1930s, a vacation to Sun Valley was only slightly more feasible than a visit to St. Moritz.

Ketchum is, after all, America’s original ski town. Home to the first destination ski resort in the country and the world’s first ski lifts and, since Sun Valley first opened with a star-studded soirée in 1936

Not only was it famous for it's skiing, it was also known for mild summers: Union Pacific Railroad boasted there was no more attractive place in the Northwest to spend a hot summer. And in 1991 railroad magnate Jay Gould bought a party in by private train.

Historian John Lundin points out that tourism didn’t start here with the Sun Valley Lodge, the railroads promoted these hotels as a way to get people to come here on their railroads long before 1936.

In 1888 a company of investors led by Union Pacific publicist Robert Strahorn bought the town of Hailey, the 2,500 acre Croy Ranch where the hot springs sat and the 8,000-acre Quigley Ranch for $100,000. They were looking to make a killing when the Oregon Shortline built its Wood River Branch terminus.

The company also bought and developed the towns of Shoshone, Mountain Home, Caldwell, Weiser and Ontario, Ore.

http://www.postindependent.com/sports/outdoors/alpine-touring-the-early-years/
https://www.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com/100thanniversary/union-pacific-railroad/
https://sunvalleymag.com/articles/this-idaho-town-ketchum/